the rubbed tooth
(lines composed in honor of Beirut’s “Elephant Gun” video)
Oh dear young man throb on lap dance seat
this hot seat rock back and forth
holding your knees to the sound of the horn’s glare
o release me to my drink
Damocles between her fine stocking needs
release me to shrink among these the ambitious
shriek to what escape
this business this business looped
town my job was
to see and cry among the ones unable to monetize
a self-scrutinized oh what was I don’t
you see something is trying to fight
its way off this page to reach you?
behind the blue: the cobalt the aqua in
digo ribbons dance seductively don’t you
see this poem is clawing out
for you the vertebra makes
a submissive circle is this what you wanted
system-mama? I
will suckle my thumb around this
town where the milk winds
down they ring around you halo
aureole a mania
in the crowd skeletal kiss
shroud shroud throng in
thralled how we
rush to greet you.
Michael Cooper is a MFA student at CSUSB who is fascinated by the fragmentation of language. He gigs and does spoken word all over the inland empire. His work plays with diction and polyphony in an attempt to shock us back into a critical awareness of how frail we are. He feels we are at our most beautiful at our point of failure: orchids in the same vase of water.
Inlandia: A Literary Journey 